


A Terrible Isekai Adventure

by Adamsark



Series: A Terrible Jumpchain [1]
Category: Jumpchain, Original Work
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:00:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23676505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adamsark/pseuds/Adamsark
Summary: Okay, so I somehow found myself in another world, a fantasy land of magic and monsters... But I can't understand anyone, and everyone's treating me like I'm sort of freak or monster, and- SOMEBODY SAVE ME!The struggle is real. This is a terrible Isekai adventure.
Series: A Terrible Jumpchain [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1704877
Kudos: 2





	A Terrible Isekai Adventure

There was a floating blue box in front of me, blocking my vision.

**'HEY, SO YOU'VE BEEN DRAFTED TO GO ON A QUEST!'**

**'YOUR GOAL IS TO DELVE THE 'MEGADUNGEON', CLEAR ALL IT'S BOSSES, AND SLAY THE DRAGON ON IT'S LAST FLOOR'**

**'HAVE FUN'**

**'-YOUR BENEFACTOR'**

"What." Was all I could say before the box disappeared, and now I could actually see around me.

The buildings were all made of wood and solid stone, nothing looked taller than a few stories high, and were clearly built to keep out the chilly weather I was just now starting to feel. There wasn't anything modern about these structures, a hodgepodge of messy placement. The road wound along the buildings, not the other way around, and blue glowing street lights broke up the middle 'lane', dividing the traffic in the street in each direction. It was like stepping into a historical village, but with access to concrete and modern lightning.

The people walking around looked oddly uniform, all blond- or red-haired and sun-tanned skinned, but the occasional streak of unnatural hair color popped out, like deep purple or shock silver. The weird-coloured hair people had huge pointy ears, sticking a good few inches out of their heads. Everyone either looked decently fit or skinny, but not a single one of them was taller than five-foot-ten.

I stood out like a sore thumb. Tall, fat, brown-haired and pale as all heck. The clothes I wore probably didn't help. I had been just bumming at home, and had shorts, a tee-shirt, and my Crocs on. The only things in my pockets were my keychain, which had my house keys, a small multi-tool, and a tiny flashlight attached to it.

I'd been Isekai'd, with nothing but the clothes on my back. I had so many questions, I almost just walked up to the nearest person to question everything and anything about this place. My curiosity, thankfully, was kept at bay, as I noticed the people around me staring. Panicking, I ducked into an alleyway a bit ahead.

Things got more complicated as I spotted a couple of covered crates in the alleyway, stamped with strange text I couldn't read. It was structured in lines, with branches denoting different letters, but was structured in what could be called phrases, divided by dots that looked like periods.

Straining my ears, I listened to the people walking past the alley's entrance. Again, I came up short with another barrier, but a lesser one. The spoken language sounded similar to english, but it was clearly had a different twist to it, almost like it was an ancestral form of Old English. The stress on the first syllable was distinctive, it reminded me of those old RTS medieval games with european languages.

So.

I couldn't understand the common language, I looked weird compared to everyone else, and I had nothing to help me along.

What a terrible starting point.

0-0-0-0

I stole the cloth covering on the crate, cut a hole in the middle with my multitool, and used the rope as a makeshift belt. It looked crap, but was much less noticeable than the clothes underneath. Going out into the streets with my new coverings got me less looks, but I still felt eyes on my back every so often.

Still, I got to take in the sights of the city without too much attention. Eventually, I found a main road, wide enough for several horse-drawn carriages to pass through, loaded up with all sorts of goods. The new locale also let me figure out this city was sloped down in one direction, and was built along the side of a coast. The closer I got to the sea, the more open everything was, until the beachfront was mostly clear, except the ports reaching out to let ships dock.

Several things started to stand out as I kept exploring.

For one, magic existed. A street performer made an illusion appear for a crowd, an intricate story of some sort played out in miniature inside the illusion itself. Cloaked men would go around to the unlit street lights, would touch them, and they'd light up. A long cart going around the main street had men tossing rubbish into the back of it, after following it for a bit, I'd been lead to a pit where a magic user was opening a portal for the garbage to fall into, disappearing to somewhere else.

Another was the minority of the long-eared people. They consisted of something like one in twenty of the population, give or take. There was other 'races' as well that I'd discovered. There was a cat-eared girl selling wares at a market stall, a robe-wearing man with what looked like a holy symbol on his chest was very... wiggly and grey, like he was made of rubber, and I even spotted a tiny person- No, like literally tiny, barely more than a half a foot tall, flying around on butterfly wings.

Those were rare, thought. Mostly everyone else looked human-ish, if a bit uniform in coloration. Blue and green eyes dominated, with the occasional brown, skin colour always seemed to stay at least a bit tan all the way down to light brown, and the hair sticked strictly to shades of blond and red.

My big discovery for the morning was a temple. It had a similar build to the rest of the city, along with a small graveyard in the back and religious symbols dotting the doors and stonework. The religious symbol was two circles intertwined, the left-hand one offset and lower than the other.

It was the best possible place to get answers, at least as far as I could tell. Any religion that had an actual church built in civilization would need to be helpful to some degree, even if it was as a place of worship. Pious people were usually kind and patient, I just hoped these ones would be as well.

Walking in, I was greeted by a long-eared man with neon-gold hair and blue eyes. "hagl fremed, horda khan Woah then hillege lys Hkjelpe deeg Deag?"

From there, things got much harder. Miming and gestures only got so much communication across, but some of my questions eventually got answers. 

Svarri, a Cleric of Woah-Then (or maybe wooden?), informed me I was in Reinuru, a city on the coast of the Norskan Kingdom. Olaf the Fair was the current ruler, leading peacefully for the last two decades after pushing back an invasion from the southern kingdom of Fichworge. Norskan was mostly composed of the west and northern parts of the Norden continent, opposite of Fichworge, which itself was connected to Swarthe, and finally Swarthe led into the rest of the world as the closest point to the Southern Continent of Surdest. Fichworge was stretched diagonally across the continent and had most of the territory in the center under it's rule, while Swarthe controlled the southern and eastern ends of the island.

The church itself held a repast at midday after a sermon, which would be in a few hours. Simple work that would pay a wage was a bit harder to find, but Svarri worked out the details of some sort of magical ritual that payed a bit to anyone who participated at certain locations across the city. The ritual had something to do with enhancing the arable areas outside of the city proper, while also purifying the river crossing the center of town. Lodging was going to be more difficult, but I figured out that there was a low-status workhouse outside of the city proper, which rented cheap beds to dozens of the peasantry that worked the farmland, costing only a single copper coin.

I stuck around afterwards for the sermon and meal. The priest literally lit up with Holy Light halfway through his service, and blessed a banquet of food with his accumulated holy energy. Afterwards, the food was divvied up into downright tiny portions, barely more than a few bites of bread and clean-looking cups of water. It somehow completely filled me, gave me a boost of energy like I'd sipped on a good cup of coffee, and tasted like the best piece of bread I'd ever eaten.

I followed some people that Svarri introduced me to, regular participants to the ritual. They didn't look off or anything, other than being on the leaner side of a healthy weight. We all traveled about a mile to the west side of the city, outside the main walls to the farm area on the outskirts of Reinuru, where a man in a fancy robe and hat stood in a large circle with four younger men. A wizard and his apprentices, maybe?

The ritual started with the wizard sketching out patterns of runes onto the ground in a circle, while the apprentices coached the crowd on what to do. It wasn't anything complicated, just reciting a phrase after the wizard spoke, and joining hands with everyone around the ritual circle.

I grasped hands with a older man in rough but well-kept clothing, and a long-eared woman in other hand. The ritual took five minutes to cast, but was repeated three times to affect three separate areas of farmland. Each area under the effects of the spell seemed to darken in color, like the soil had been revitalized. Considering overlap, we must have enchanted something close to a kilometre-long strip, about three of four hundred feet wide. Each casting felt like a portion of my energy was being sapped to power, and by the end of it I was feeling like I'd run for ten minutes straight- not terribly tired, but I'd have to cool off for half an hour to recover.

The apprentices handed out a few copper coins to everyone who participated, and I left five coins richer. Some charades for directions with the older man who was besides me in the ritual led me to the western market, one meant for the poorer population of the city. I found a vendor selling containers with a bit of searching, and bought a small leather pouch with a belt loop from him. It was puny, but would work as a money belt. It was just as hard to find a food merchant that sold rations, which brought me down to my last copper coin. It would be worth it, especially if I ever missed a meal.

I drank from the nearly crystal-clear river a little later, and spent the afternoon searching the gutters for any lost money, but came out empty-handed. Oh well.

As the sun was setting, I made my way to the direction of the workhouse. It was a wooden building just on the outskirts of the farmland, and while it wasn't as well maintained as the structures inside the city walls, it was still in one piece. I payed for my lodging, and was surprised that it included a small meal, about the same size as what I'd gotten after the church sermon, but much less filling. Now without any money, and with nothing to do, I fell into my bunk, and tried to sleep.

I'd made it through the day... barely. I had shelter, food, and a way to make money, even if it wasn't much.

I just had to keep going. I had to hope everything would work out eventually.

**Author's Note:**

> Session ended. Gained 3 Points!
> 
> How do you spend them?  
> > I'm going to put one point towards learning the common language.  
> Done. You now know Northern Common at a broken level.  
> > Can I put a point towards buying off my Mundane Background?  
> Sure. You have four left to go on that.  
> > Finally, I want to use the last point to on the Urban Survival Skill.  
> That works.
> 
> Oh, your Wealth Potential Advantage is going into effect. You're being penalized with Status -1, but your Wealth is going up to Struggling.  
> > I'm alright with that.
> 
> See you next week!


End file.
